Japan's Economic
Miracle Is Still to Come

By

Takuma Amano and

Robert Blohm

Updated June 24, 1997 12:01 a.m. ET

Until the end of the 1980s, Japan was regarded as the postwar economic miracle, having risen from ruin to G-7 status. But Japan's current economic woes, like its success, have been due to its unique form of capitalism, in which government bureaucracy removed or controlled a substantial part of the systematic risk inherent in a market economy. Japan was pointed in that direction by New Deal social engineers, who were given run of the roost under Gen. Douglas MacArthur's occupation.